Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of applications such as logic devices, memory devices, CPUs, and the like. It is commonplace to integrate two or more types of electronic circuits into one semiconductor device. To do this, however, requires redesigning of the semiconductor device with added cost. It has therefore been common practice to connect a plurality of semiconductor chips for a unit of the semiconductor device. Such a semiconductor device in the prior art is fabricated by merely connecting a plurality of bare chips mounted on a circuit board through soldering bumps prepared on anyone of the bare chips.
Accordingly, the prior art such as described above lacked ingenuity in connecting the bare chips together, or in the mounting of the semiconductor device onto a circuit board.
For instance, to connect two bare chips together a bonding pad for connecting electrodes on one of the bare chips must be prepared on the other bare chip. This required redesigning of the bare chip.
Otherwise, when the bare chips were mounted on a circuit board by directly connecting any of the bare chips to a circuit board, cracks sometimes developed at the connections due to the difference in the thermal expansion coefficients of the bare chip and the circuit board.
Accordingly, with an aim at eliminating the above-described problems of the prior art, it is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic component and a semiconductor device that are capable of reducing cost or improving reliability in the connecting of chips to each other or to a circuit board, a method of fabricating the same, a circuit board mounted with the same, and an electronic appliance comprising the circuit board.